Dr Aidan While

Co-Director

About Aidan

After studying for a BA and MA in Art History and English, Aidan discovered planning via the Masters in Civic Design (RTPI-accredited) at the University of Liverpool. He studied for a part-time PhD on Partnerships and Regional Economic Governance (awarded 2001) whilst working as a Research Assistant in the Centre for Urban Development and Environmental Management (CUDEM) at Leeds Metropolitan University. After completing his PhD, he worked as a Research Fellow in the Department of Geography, University of Hull and Lecturer in Urban Planning at the University of Manchester.

Aidan is Associate Editor for the Journal of Planning Theory and Practice and an editorial board member for Town Planning Review. He is a member of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Policy Review College and an external examiner for postgraduate planning programmes at the Newcastle University.

Research interests

Dr While has completed three interlinked research projects on planning for high-growth ‘new economic spaces’ involving case-study research in Cambridge (UK), Stockholm, Munich, Seattle, Boston (USA), Bangalore and Kuala Lumpur. Funded by the British Academy and the Nuffield Foundation, the central concern of this research has been to examine the effectiveness and outcomes of growth management in different national and regional contexts. This research has opened up new research agendas on growth coalitions and the politics of collective provision.

A second strand of his research focuses on the implications of climate change and climate policy for urban and regional governance. He is particularly interested in the impact of the carbon calculus on policy and investment decisions. This formed the basis of a recent British Academy funded project on ‘Carbon value change and policy choices in local governance’.